New Jersey to experiment with MMA judges in soundproof room watching fights on monitor

The most important observers to a mixed martial arts bout are the men and women who will inevitably decide the winner. But do judges cageside actually have the best vantage point? The New Jersey State Athletic Control Board (NJSACB) wants to find out.

With the hopes of compiling substantive data, a group of judges will score the Cage Fury Fighting Championships fights from a separate, soundproof room Oct. 31 in Atlantic City, CFFC announced in a press release this week. The judges will watch the action on a television monitor without sound.

The scorecards from this group will have no bearing on the outcome of the fights. But the NJSACB will compare and analyze the scores from the group watching on a monitor to the ones from the judges scoring the same fights at cageside.

“It’s just an effort to try and improve scoring and get it right,” NJSACB counsel Nick Lembo told MMA Fighting. “We owe it to the fighters. The judges should have the best available angle.”

There are a lot of variables involved for judges watching cageside that many fans are not aware of. Depending on the seat and the sight line, judges can miss things that happen during the fight. ….View original article